The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So I go to like sign, but more seal, the rental contract for the house by the sea. The rental people are the model of restraint and patience. We are immediately served with cold tea but this time with optional syrup – new touch for me.

Green tea with syrup made from distilled cockle sweat

Long discussion on finer details. Many thanks to Naoko san who speaks the  language.

Who repaints the deck?

Finally the moment comes to sign and seal. I have grown to to love using my hanko but it is only a little one. I want to have a big bulging Kanji hanko. Apparently I can get one but it is a little complicated necessitating lots of registering documents. Your hanko is your proof of being you so you do not change it lightly.

Contractu

Finally we complete the deal by all three parties, owner, agency and me sealing the overlap of the  top page.

My hanko is in the middle. Pitiful n’est ce pas?

So that’s it. I move into the house by the sea on 12 October.

Wakarimashitanokitatanakagusuku!!!!

I have watched birds since my mid twenties but in a sort of desultory way. I had binoculars and kept a list but I was a lazy birder in that when it came to really putting in the work and adopting the discipline needed to distinguish between different pipits, warblers, shorebirds etc, I would have a little lie down instead.

Today I had the great privilege of going a birding with the real thing – Tom and Dan two top-level birders.

Great guys – Tom foreground.

They take me to the Kin paddy fields. It was bliss. Read Tom’s summary.

“Dan Smith flew in from Yokosuka last night so we decided on a birding foray to the Kin Town paddies this morning,  We met up Neil Calder, a relatively new birder living on island, who hails from Scotland.  In his words, “What a fantastic morning at Kin!”  We ticked 18 species of waders to include:

Black-winged Stilt

Pacific Golden-Plover

Little Ringed-Plover

Common Snipe

Whimbrel

Common Redshank

Marsh Sandpiper

Common Greenshank

Green Sandpiper (2 @ Yakka paddies)

Wood Sandpiper

Grey-tailed Tattler

TEREK SANDPIPER

Common Sandpiper

Red-necked Stint

Long-toed Stint

SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPER

RUFF

RED-NECKED PHALAROPE

Other birds of note: 10-Eastern Spot-billed Duck; 2-FOS Eurasian Teal; 1-CHINESE POND HERON; 20-Whiskered Tern; 2-FOS Brown Shrike (1 @ Yakka); 200+ Barn Swallow; and 20+-Eastern Yellow Wagtail.”

The capitals indicate seriously rare birds.

Large billed crow

Cattle Egrets with traces of breeding plumage

Little Ringed Plover

Whiskered Tern

Common Redshank

Ruff

You get the idea.

I get 4 hours of excited concentration in  hot paddy fields thronged with birds and occasional industrious Okinawans doing stuff to rice and tarot. Exotic.

Tom and Dan were perfect company, patient with my ignorance and generous with their vast knowledge. Thank you

Another night in Smugglers in Naha with the best Trad Irish band in Okinawa – The Islanders. For the first time for er some time, we have a full line up. 2 fiddles, 2 flutes, strong guitar and stronger percussion. It is a demanding performance as we play from 8:00 until 12:00 in 30 degree heat. Check the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJcXczey77U

String section

Maid in the Cherry Tree

I get home at 2:00!

Hmmm, so I finally abandon my garden project. It is just too hard to grow stuff here unless I suspect, you have several generations of  understanding of what to plant when and where. Virtually everything I planted was either; scorched by the sun , rotted in the soaked ground or atomized by typhoons. I planted tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, carrots, daikon, lettuce, onions, potatoes, beni imo, cauliflower, cabbage,  garlic and goya. Nothing worked apart from the goya.

Dust to dust

Ashes to ashes

It was exactly the same story for the flowers on my balcony.

What a typhoon does to geraniums and stuff

However my new place has a protected courtyard in which I can grow banks of flowers and train vines and goya across the trellis roof. This is more intelligent.

It is my sister’s birthday today. I have known her all my life. Can’t say that about many people. Currently 4 I think.

Then

Now

Happy birthday Rosie!!

Stumbling along a beach in Okinawa is different from the same activity on those beaches I have stumbled along hitherto.  Okinawan beaches are bustling with hermit crabs. There are thousands of them. Where do they find their shells? There are no empty ones. Every shell is already occupied. It is a seller’s market when it comes to housing for crabs. I fear social disorder amongst homeless crabs.

Upwardly mobile crab

Just moved in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBea7sZ8jKQ&feature=youtu.be

They are everywhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICOIx_LGMYI&feature=youtu.be

I like to watch.

I get out early to see what I can see post typhoon.  I love to ramble and just take time to look at er stuff.

Juvenile Black Crowned Heron practicing standing on one leg

Pacific Golden Plover

I know nothing about butterflies. Mea culpa. These babes are big

Lesser Sand Plover. Actually not, it is a Kentish Plover a long way from the white cliffs. I was looking at the wrong bit of the page in the bird book if you see what I mean. Hmm too difficult to explain

Ruddy Turnstone

The sea is still multo disturbato

Two Pacific Reef Egrets and two Intermediate Egrets chew the fat.

An hermit crab

Common Sandpiper

A pair of Common Greenshanks and a Common Sandpiper – I think.

Typhoon brushed

Cosiness is not a state that I experience much in Okinawa. Essentially it is too hot here to be cosy. However my happiest of all memories are as a child in Scotland when the weather was too awful to go outside and so the family would sit in the kitchen in comfy chairs and I believe there was even a sofa. We would snuggle under hand-made tartan blankets with dogs, cats, lion cubs, lambs and such whilst our Mother read us Midshipman Easy, Masterman Ready, Swallows and Amazons and What Katie Did in various places. The storm howled outside and the windows shook under the battering rain. There was no guilt , no feeling of wasting time,  justified idleness – the weather was just too bad.

Saturday was a bit like that here. I polished silver.

Silvoed

I love polishing silver

I watched All Blacks against Argentina.

The Argentinians are really good.

I prepared and ate elaborate meals.

Exotic red fish with squid and kimchi salad

Sometimes I wish I had a bottle of white wine. I bought the Bar Keepers Friend in SF. Could not resist a name like that.

The weather was awful – rain, rain, wind, wind, happy, happy, joy, joy.  I learned tunes on the flute.  02 The Glens Of Aherlow _ Trip To Hervé’s

Could not go outside. Bliss. I wonder what happened to the hand woven tartan blankets we used to have?  Never tire of the road.

“Bottom line: Super Typhoon Sanba, arguably the strongest storm to develop across the globe in 2012 is packing winds around 160 mph, and peaked with sustain winds of around 175 mph on Thursday, September 13, 2012. Sanba will push north into Okinawa, Japan and eventually push into South Korea as a Category 2 storm next Monday. The good news about Sanba is that the storm will likely weaken as it pushes over cooler waters. Of course, intensity forecasts are unpredictable, so residents that are possibly in Sanba’s path should be prepared.”

Not your usual Saturday morning

Normal Saturday morning

“Arguably the strongest storm to develop across the globe in 2012” is going to pass oer  my place on Sunday morning about 24 hours from now. I feel so privileged. Let’s see how it develops. Cue samba music.

World’s biggest assed storm coming right to my front door. Hooray!

Lunchtime Saturday – very heavy rain but not much wind.

Can you see my house?

Unfortunately the real fury of the typhoon came in the early hours. I got up at 6:00 to check the barograph and generally see how things were progressing. Barograph still going down with much howling and wailing from Sanba.

The situation at 6:00. No electricity or gas.

By the time it got light the barograph was on the way up again and there was a general feeling that the worst was over. No power until 11:30. This when an Ipad comes in really handy. You can read on it in the dark and listen to whatever you want when everything else is dead.  I should talk to Apple about building typhoons into their marketing.

Lunch time Sunday

Okinawa is the best place for barographs!

At lunchtime I go for a wander. It is still extremely windy. So much so that it is impossible to see through the viewfinder of the camera as can be seen by the focus of following movie. It hope it conveys the huge volume of sea heaving and groaning against the land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67mSs2iNg5c&feature=youtu.be

Sand blown all over the road.

A good thing about typhoons is that rarer birds show up in the more sheltered valleys.

Black-winged stilt

No idea what this is.

Oh well the storm is over and I feel a sense of flatness. I like the really strong stuff.

And now the storm is over,
And we are safe and well
We will go down to a public house,
And sit and drink like hell
We will drink strong ale and porter,
And we’ll make the rafters roar
And when our money is all spent,
We will go to sea once more
FINE GIRL YOU ARE
You’re the girl that I adore,
But still I live in hope to see
The holy Ground once more, FINE GIRL YOU ARE

I am organizing an exhibition by Inamine sensei, famous Okinawan glass artist.

http://www.ryukyucollection-kana.com/inamine-seikichi.html

To make a poster, he gives me a piece.  I need photos and I will use a proper photographer but in the mean time I take the glass-bowl-thing down to a beach to watch the sunset and to see what I can do. September in Okinawa is the best month. Huge clouds, amazing sunsets, sea hot, a little cooler in the evenings. Ok there is a typhoon on its way but we subtropical folks take this in our stride by battening down the hatches and waiting until the storm is o’er.

Bring it on

Zero weather hysteria which now seems to make up a significant volume of international news.

I place the object and set up the camera on a tripod and sit there as the sun goes down. Very silent apart from the sea and scrabbling of hermit crabs. Sometimes I press the button and the crash of the shutter is jolting.

Over the yard arm

Shangri La

Crash

Bang

Wallop

Okinawa.